The Spotlight: Tara Thompson

I moved to Europe at 18. It’s a miracle I’m still alive but I made it work.

WHO: Tara Thompson

WHERE: Paris, France

WHAT: Solo Female Backpacker, Au Pair, Student Whose Gap-Year Turned into Three

I caught up with Tara, a solo female backpacker working as an Au Pair in Paris, France. After graduating high school, she visited her brother in the Virgin Islands, kicking off a travel adventure that’s literally taken her across the world. Hear how she moved to Italy at 18 to kick start her solo backpacking adventures, how she had to fly home at the peak of the pandemic even though there were no employees in the airport, and her plans for protecting coral reefs the world over.
(For a recap of The Spotlight, click here)

Me: Tell me about your trip to Costa Rica after your visit to the Virgin Islands.
Tara: It was my first trip as a solo female backpacker. I was basically with another me, my friend Maybel. I was there for a week; she was there for a month. She’s brave.
Me: What did y’all do?
Tara: I flew in and then took a bus to Tamarindo and we were there for four days. We learned how to surf, we went on an ATV tour through the mountains up and down mud, and then we did a hike to a waterfall. Basically we did a bunch of guided tours in nature, did some beach days, and stayed in hostels. We cooked in the hostel and it was filled with so many other young backpackers. It was great. Learning to surf was the highlight of the trip though because I actually got to stand up and ride a wave.
M: Did you go anywhere else?
T: We went to a town called La Fortuna and it’s called that, which means the fortunate, because there’s a volcano there that erupted but spared the whole town. So we did a bunch more hiking and exploring. We got bracelets from a street vendor and it was just a really good time. I want to go back.

…which in hindsight seems dangerous but whatever.

Me: And after that, you moved to Italy, right? Describe that process.
Tara: I googled “cheap young solo female travel” which in hindsight seems dangerous but whatever. The first hit though came from a website called aupairworld.com. It was a super easy setup to create my account, and it was accredited and I researched to make sure it wasn’t a scam. I made my profile and before I knew it hundreds of families from around the world were asking me to come work for them. It was my first time so I picked Italy because I’d always wanted to go, and in less than a week I was on a plane.
M: Where in Italy were you?
T: I was in Milan. Well, a suburb of Milan, but Milan.
M: How long were you there?
T: Exactly 90 days because that’s how long my visa would allow me to stay.
M: Did you go straight to work first day? And what language did they want you to speak?
T: First day I arrived I began work, and I spoke Italian and English. I don’t know Italian very well anymore but I used duolingo the week before getting there and I took tutoring from a girl in my neighborhood.

I moved to Europe at 18. It’s a miracle I’m still alive but I made it work.

Me: I remember you did some traveling while you were there. Tell me where you went.
Tara: Every weekend I tried to go to a new place. I didn’t have responsibilities on the weekends with my job, so I would pick a place and book a flight and hostel and just wing it. I would research cities and read blogs and learn why a place was the best, and I had a notebook to compare ideas and prices and blogs. I went to Amsterdam, Florence, Venice, Rome, Paris, Lake Cuomo, Cinque Terre. And one of my dad’s friends lived in Milan, so he’d pick me up and we’d drive anywhere. We went to Switzerland for a few hours and it was amazing.
M: Go back to all the research you were doing. Why?
T: I learned some self-defense techniques and learned resources about the places I was traveling because as a solo female backpacker I was scared about getting into dangerous situations so I always wanted to be prepared early. I mean, I moved to Europe at 18. I don’t know why or how. It’s a miracle I’m still alive but I made it work.
M: Tell me about being scared as a solo female backpacker and what you did to help you feel safer.
T: I was always looking up other solo female backpackers to check what they said about a place and I joined a Facebook page specifically for solo female travelers. It has 60,000 members and I could learn stuff about which areas of a city are safer, and then other stuff like “free tickets”, little things like that. I would look up the emergency numbers before I went. And in a lot of European cities you can’t have mace or pocketknives, so I bought these real dense, heavy keychains that had cats on them, because “it’s a keychain officer, not a weapon.” And I bought this small alarm that would ring so loud. I accidentally set it off in my hostel and my ears were ringing. The main thing I did however was go through excruciating detail about the hostel I was going to pick. The location of your hostel is the most important. I’d sacrifice other things to have a hostel in a good part of town.

Do you want a picture? Cause there’s nobody here.

Me: How’d you end up working in Paris?

Tara: So after I left Italy, I was back at home in Oklahoma for a few months. I used the same website to find a family to work for in the city center of Paris, but I needed a visa. It was easy, France has a specific au pair visa. You need a government mandated contract from your host family, travel insurance, and a few other random documents. After I applied, I had to fly to Houston to the French embassy there to do an interview.

M: But didn’t you have problems getting your visa?

T: They were really picky and it depends on the person that’s reviewing your case, and they denied my visa but didn’t tell me until a week before my flight, but through a miracle I got it approved last minute and flew out.

M: How was life in Paris?
T: It was a dream. I made some other au pair friends through a dedicated chat group. There were almost 400 of us in Paris on the chat, so I asked if anybody wanted to grab a drink and that’s how I met my best friend there and we meshed immediately. She’s from New Zealand. But the first few months were messed up because I had to come home a few times and then covid hits and all of a sudden, I have to pack my bags and go home immediately. And there was nobody at the airport and I missed my flight because security was so slow and didn’t give an eff.
M: Wait, there was nobody there? Like, no employees?
T: There was nobody there to check people in and there was hardly anybody at security too. I was on the phone with American Airlines [customer service] and I even said “do you want a picture? Cause there’s nobody here.” But my plane left without me so once I made it through security, I bought a new ticket, and I even got behind the desk to print it myself! So I got shoved onto a plane to come home and I didn’t see my luggage for four days. It went to Amsterdam. It was crazy hectic.

I was almost an illegal immigrant in France.

M: How long until you were able to go back?
T: I was in Oklahoma for almost three months. I got a job working for The Boys and Girls Club of America. I loved it. Ten out of ten. But after three months I was able to go back because my visa said I was a resident of France. But I had some visa problems and almost became an illegal immigrant in France. It took forever to get my visa renewed and it was tough and took hours, but now I have a residency card which is more than just a stamp. I’m going to keep that forever. And I have amazing friends, so we spent time traveling to Nice and Marseille.
M: Oh so you got to be on the French Riviera. Nice.
T: Yeah it was unbelievably beautiful. People are so nice and we stayed in an oceanfront AirBnB. It was me and a couple other au pairs just relaxing. We went on trips to Cannes, Antibes, and Marseille. We explored, went to the shops and restaurants, and did a lot of walking and beaching it.
M: All women?
T: Yup. All backpacking the French Riviera. It was sick.

I was taking some classes part-time and got a 4.0 if you want to slide that in there.

Me: So what’s next?
Tara: I’ll be starting at the University of The Virgin Islands studying marine biology. My mom and my friend Maybel are moving me in, and I’ll get a job and live in the dorms.
M: Why marine biology?
T: I love the ocean and animals and I wanted to put them together. From when I can remember, I went on a trip to South Padre Island and there was a turtle rescue there and I was obsessed with it. I’m really interested in coral and helping the coral that’s bleached. I’m interested in that and I also want to work with environmental sustainability. I’m passionate about using sustainable products.

Tara is the epitome of the idea behind The Live Lost. She’s willing to take a leap of faith and find out where she’ll land somewhere along the way. She’s lived in Europe for over two years, been to 9 countries and 12 states, and wants to keep adding to those numbers. You can find her studying and soaking up the Caribbean sun, and you can follow her backpacking adventures here.